Will Mancini

My friend Joe Ely brought this Wall Street article to my attention today.  It’s a stirring piece on the state of our great institutions and a solution that seems as stunningly obvious as it is brilliantly novel.  We might not be able to single-handedly redirect the course of our great institutions, but we can get up each day and play our part with mission clarity.  Here are a few excerpts from Looking Ahead with Stoicism and Optimism. 

Maybe the most worrying trend in the past 10 years can be found in this phrase: “They forgot the mission.” So many great American institutions—institutions that every day help hold us together—acted as if they had forgotten their mission, forgotten what they were about, what their role and purpose was, what they existed to do. You, as you read, can probably think of an institution that has forgotten its reason for being. Maybe it’s the one you’re part of.

Noonan references the following institutions before continuing:

• The Federal Government
• Wall Street
• The Catholic Church
• Congress
• Public Schools
• Journalism 

And as all these institutions forgot their mission, they entered the empire of spin. They turned more and more attention, resources and effort to the public perception of their institution, and not to the reality of it.

She concludes with the punch, “If you work in a great institution: Do you remember the mission? Do you remember why you went to work there, what you meant to do, what the institution meant to you when you viewed it from the outside, years ago, and hoped to become part of it?”

Before closing this post, I want to make one evangelical connection to this decade-in-review. Christianity Today asked several folks to comment on the most significant changes to Christianity in the last decade. Noonan’s article reminds me of Ed Stetzer’s response.  It is a short take and I will let you continue the reflection. Stetzer says the most significant change is:  

“Evangelical angst about its current state and future prospects. Evangelicals are trying to figure out who they are and who they should be…” Read more. 

Before engaging this post, please know that I want you to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus for the Glory of God.  The challenge is simply a matter of how. Here is the Tribes quote I would like you to consider:

Almost all growth that’s available to you exists when you aren’t like “most people” and when you work hard to appeal to folks who aren’t “most people.”

We often talk about the downside of trying to be “all things to all people” through an organizational approach to ministry that leaves us “nothing to anybody.”

Seth Godin introduces another way of looking at the same tension, by using the phrase “most people.” In a nutshell he shares that tribes have dramatic results when stop trying to reach “most people” and can focus on their strength, their niche and their unique vision.  

Even strategic church leaders can slip into a subtle desperation of wanting to reach “most people” and miss the opportunity to leverage their strengths to reach more people. Again we run into the dynamic, counter-intuitive principle that focus expands. 

Its that simple- do you want to reach “most people” or more people? 

• How are the people in the community God has given you to reach not like “most people?”
• How are you and your team not like “most people?”
• How does your ________________ limit you from reaching “most people?”  Insert in blank: Church building (or lack of), programs, worship style, denomination, etc.
• Look at the ministry of Jesus.  Was he always trying to reach “most people?”
• Consider the four Gospels. Why are there four? Was each one written to “most people?”
• How would you summarize the people you are best at reaching with five words? 

Note: Some of these question are not easy and may lead to very robust conversations. Engage the dialogue and work through to clarity.

I just received a blog post from a leader who is considering working with Auxano. The team is talking a lot about identity and culture in their church and one of the staff sent this post around entitled, “The dirty little secret about the top leadership” from the Center for Creative Leadership.

What is the dirty little secret? In many
organizations the top leadership can’t clearly define their value proposition. Here are a few excerpts from the full post here.

• So, I ask, “what is the direction of the company?” We are inundated with direction and vision statements that would all serve as good examples of what my high school civics teacher called ‘glittering generalities.’ They are well-meaning, but often sound just like every other company’s vision statement.

• For these statements to become more than lovely aspirations something is missing. So what’s missing? What’s missing is clarity about the identity of the organization, its character.

• If we know who we are and what we are becoming, the people of the organization can make intelligent choices about the investment of their time and energy. So many vision statements read like imperial dreams: to become the best…the biggest…the leading…. They can be overly involved in promises of performance. They’re too pie-in-the-sky to have much effect on the majority of workers. They’re not personal enough.

• It is the job of the senior leadership of the organization to model and give voice to the organization’s identity. As they do, people throughout the organization understand what actions are worthy and what are not (ethics). Workers at all levels can believe in the vision, because they identify with the organization and they adopt that identify as their own (execution).

• Identity stays the same no matter what’s happening in the market.

• And, as we know, people live up to (or down to) who they think they are. It’s the job of the senior team to walk and talk the identity of the organization.

• Does your organization have a clear sense of who you are as an organization? If it does, the executive leadership is on the ball.

Uncovering your Kingdom Concept is practice along the Vision Pathway to answer the question, “What can your church do better than 10,000 others.” In defining this reality for each church we look closely at Place (Local Predicament), People (Collective Potential) and Passion (Apostolic Esprit).

Jack Thomas is a church planter launching in urban Pittsburgh in May of 2010.  I not only love his cultural exegesis, but the succinct and quality way he is communicating his Local Predicament via video.

LifeStone Community Focus Video from Jack Thomas on Vimeo.

While my mind is on CAVE dwellers from yesterday’s post, I thought I would pass on this top ten list I saw on Josh Reich’s blog, a young pastor in Tuscon. Below is his post on a book by Bob Franquiz entitled, Zero to Sixty. It has a chapter on
Church Hoppers. Here is how to spot a church hopper and what they
mean (my favorite is the last one):

1. “But my old church…” This usually means they want your church to be like their old
church.

2. “I just need time to be fed.” This means, “I don’t want to do anything. I’m here
just to sit and see what I can get out of this church, so don’t expect me to
serve in any way, shape, or form.

3. “I’m looking for a church that teaches the Word.” This means, “I’m looking for a
church that dispenses lots of information without challenging me to do
anything.”

4. “We came here because we are looking for deep teaching.” This usually means their
last church focused too much on actually obeying the Word. They want a church
that just talks about the Rapture, the Second Coming, who the Hittites were and
the identity of Theophilus.

5. “I should know my pastor.” This means, “In my last church, I got to know the
pastor, but when the church grew, and the pastor couldn’t have dinner with us
every Tuesday night, I left and came here.”

6. “We want a church that’s focused on discipling people.” This means, “I want a
church that’s focused on me, not people who are lost.”

7. “I wish you wouldn’t focus so much on what people need to do.” This means they
don’t like commitment, they don’t like to be told the Bible actually tells them
how to live and follow Jesus. They want to come to church, live in their sin
and have no one tell them this is wrong.

8. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about money.” This is the best way to tell a pastor “I
don’t give.”

9. “My old church/pastor was…” The way people come to your church is how they will
leave. If your first conversation with them is all about their last church and
pastor, that is how they will leave your church and how they will go to their
next church.

10. “Pastor, I’ve been talking to a lot of people and they all say…” Translation: “Me, my spouse and my mother think…” If they start this way, 99.9% of the time they have no one else who thinks this way, it is just the best way to complain. If someone has a complaint and uses this line with me, they need to list all of the names or my best assumption is they talked to the same person 10 times.